Completed through His Suffering

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Transcript:

Well, last Sunday, we began our study of Hebrews chapter 2 by looking at verse 10 to see what it means that Jesus is the captain of our salvation. And the word we studied last week, archigos, which we read as captain, it’s a complex word and it’s difficult to find any single English word that really encompasses all the shades of meaning for that word. but still it points to Jesus and his unique role in our salvation.

Because you see, the human race, we need someone who can pick us up out of the pit of sin and carry us to salvation. And Jesus is the archegos. He’s the chief bringer.

He’s the one who can bring us into a right relationship with the Father. And then we focused on verses 1 through 4, where we saw that the salvation he brings is the only means of escape from the righteous judgment of a holy God. And we saw that because God’s standard of holiness is unchanging, and because his notice of every single act of disobedience is unavoidable, and because his judgment is certain, there’s no way to escape that judgment if we neglect the salvation Jesus has provided by looking somewhere else for our salvation.

So today we’re going to come back to Hebrews chapter 2, and we’re going to continue our look at the role of Jesus in salvation. So if you haven’t done so already, please turn with me in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 2, verses 1 through 10 say, Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him.

God also bearing them witness both with signs and wonders and with diverse miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost according to his own will. For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come whereof we speak, but one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels.

Thou crownedst him with glory and honor, and didst set him over the works of thine hands. Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him.

But now we see not yet all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. For it became him for whom are all things and by whom are all things in bringing many sons unto glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.

Now verses 5 through 10 point us to the humanity of Jesus, but don’t assume that that means that Jesus is just a man. It would have been ridiculous for the writer of Hebrews to spend all of chapter 1 arguing that Jesus is the only begotten son of God, only to turn around in chapter 2 then and make not to be just another ordinary human being like you and me. It would have been a ridiculous contradiction.

Now, this passage is talking about Jesus taking on a human nature in addition to his divine nature. Now, this is a complicated subject. I grant that.

And it would take a separate message, if not a whole series of messages, to go through the Bible and do an in-depth study of Jesus’ nature. But in the next couple of minutes, I’ll try to give you instead just a brief outline on the subject, just enough to really understand the passage, just to grasp the meaning of the verses that we’re going to go through this morning. And we’re going to be scratching the surface of some deep theology here, but stick with me, because these doctrines actually matter.

It’s not just seminary talk. They actually matter in our understanding of how Jesus paid the price for our salvation. So let’s start here.

Let’s start here with this premise. Jesus is God. He’s God the Son, right?

He’s the only begotten Son of God. He’s God by nature. That’s just who He is.

That’s who He always has been. He’s God. Colossians 2.

9 says, For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. He possesses all the attributes of God because He is fully God. But when His flesh was conceived by the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit.

He took on a human nature as well. Took on that human nature in addition. John 1.

14 says, and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. It says he was made flesh. He didn’t come merely to look like one of us.

He came to be one of us. So he’s also fully man. In addition to being fully God, he’s fully man.

He retained all the attributes of God gaining all of the attributes of man except for our sin nature. And so when ancient Christians were trying to make sense of these two natures, they wrote out what we now call the Chalcedonian Creed. And it’s not inspired scripture, certainly, but it’s a good summary of what scripture teaches about the nature of Jesus.

And in one section it says, Jesus has two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably. The distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved and concurring in one person and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same son. And that’s a lot of big words there, but it has a very simple meaning.

Historical Christianity teaches that Jesus is one person with two natures, okay? One person with two natures, one human and one divine that are united in the sense that they work together in harmony, but not in the sense that they’re combined into one new nature. It’s not like the humanity and the deity combine to make a third thing.

They’re still there. They’re separate. They work together within him.

I realize this sounds like, okay, why are we going through this seminary lesson this morning? Because it matters. It matters to the verses we’re going to talk about this morning.

So Jesus became just as much a human as we are while still being just as much God as the Father is. Think about that. He’s just as much human you and me, but just as much God as the Father.

It’s hard to fathom, and that’s why the churches got together and wrote this summary at Chalcedon, because so many people were getting it so very wrong. And so for my part, I have to admit, I believe what the Bible teaches, but I don’t fully understand the mechanics of how it all works. No finite human brain is big enough to hold exhaustive knowledge of an infinite God.

And so you and I are kind of like sailors, and we’re trying to comprehend the magnitude of the whole iceberg when all we can see is the tiny fraction above the surface when it comes to God. But this tiny fraction of knowledge that we have is essential because it’s vital for us to realize that Jesus could become a man without losing his divine nature. We’ve got to understand that.

He had to be human to die for our sins, and he had to be God for his sacrifice to count for our sins. And so Jesus, God the Son, took on human nature so that he could complete the work of salvation. Now let’s look at verse 5.

It says, for unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come whereof we speak. Now when it says here, hath he not, the 17th century English word order here is a little confusing, and at first I thought it was a question. But it’s not a question, it’s a statement.

He’s saying he has not. I don’t know why they put the words in that order, but they’re saying he has not. The writer was telling his audience that God hasn’t given the angels dominion over creation.

And no matter how impressed the readers were by the angels, which we’ve talked about through every message up to this point on Hebrews, no matter how impressed they were by the angels, the angels have never been the focus of God’s plans. Jesus is the focus of God’s plans because God’s desire always has been, as Titus 2. 14 puts it, to redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works.

God desires a relationship with his creations, with a people who would choose to have that fellowship. But for this relationship to be possible, Jesus would have to redeem humanity so that we could have that relationship. Jesus would have to redeem humanity.

For Jesus to redeem humanity, he would have to die for humanity. And for Jesus to die, he would have to become a human. He can’t die unless he’s a man.

Now, verses 6, 7, and 8 talk about humanity, and they quote directly verse by verse from the Septuagint translation of Psalms 8, 4 through 6. So if you turn back to Psalms chapter 8, you’ll see the same verses there again. Verse 6 says, But one in a certain place testified, What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visitest him?

The writer of the psalm being quoted was King David. And when the writer of Hebrews wrote, one in a certain place testified, it wasn’t because he forgot where he’d read this. It was because it was a well-known passage, so he assumed that his audience would have known where it came from, who wrote it, without providing an introduction.

Excuse me. Between allergies coming on all of a sudden and the microphone cracking, I feel like I’m just falling apart this morning. Stick with me.

We’ll get through this, all right? All right. All right.

he assumed that without introduction, they would have known where this psalm came from. It wasn’t that he forgot David wrote it. And in this psalm that he’s quoting, in this psalm that he’s quoting, David expressed amazement that God would even care about man at all, let alone bless us so abundantly.

And so he asked, what is man that you’re mindful of him? Now, considering how mighty and how awesome God is, David was amazed that God would even think about man and give us a place in his plans. Compared to God, we are so insignificant.

So David was pointing out how incredible it is that God would even take the time to think about us. And then he goes and he asks a similar question. David asks, what is the Son of Man that thou visitest him?

And the question there is, why would God look at the frail offspring of man and take the time not only to notice us, but to care? Why would he look out for us? And the answer is, why would he love us?

The answer is not that we’re lovable by nature, but that God is loving. It’s an incredible thing. And the writer of Hebrews used David’s expression of amazement here to remind his readers that God didn’t have to love us and save us, but he did, and he does, just because that’s who he is, right?

Just because that’s who God is. And then verse 7 says, Thou madest him a little lower than the angels. And I need to back up for a second and point out that a lot of Bible teachers think that these verses from Psalms that are being quoted here in Hebrews refer specifically to Jesus.

So Psalm 8, 4 through 6 would be a prophecy about Jesus, and Hebrews 2, 6 through 8 would be pointing to the fulfillment. And they tend to think this because of the mention of the Son of Man. But the phrase Son of Man is used several times in the Old Testament, and sometimes it’s used in ways that cannot possibly refer to Jesus.

Now take Numbers 23, 19, for example, where it talks about the Son of man needing to repent. That’s not Jesus. Jesus doesn’t need to repent.

The verse is saying that God is not like that son of man. And so the son of man can sometimes be used to apply to any literal offspring of mankind. In some of the Old Testament mentions of the son of man, including Numbers 23, 19, and I believe Psalm 8, 4, the phrase son of man is son of Adam in Hebrew.

Adam is where we get the name Adam, and we’re all offspring of Adam. You have to be careful with the phrase son of man. Sometimes it means Jesus.

Sometimes it means any of Adam’s descendants, and to tell the difference, you just have to look at the context. You have to look at what’s being said in the verse. In this case, it really appears to me that David was talking about regular human beings and expressing his amazement that God would care about such feeble creatures as us, and this description of being made lower than the angels in verse 7 is applied to Jesus in verse 9 because he became a man, but I believe the passage from Psalms quoted in verses 6 through 8 is about man and then is connected to Jesus in verse 9 by the writer of Hebrews to make a point about him taking on human nature.

So I think this is about man. It’s not about Jesus, those verses. They’re not about Jesus, but they apply to Jesus.

Does that make sense? Now when it says that man is made lower than the angels, it doesn’t mean either that we’re less valuable than the angels or that God loves us less. Like the angels, we are spiritual beings.

But unlike the angels, you and I have to deal with the struggles and the trials of physical existence in the flesh. 2 Corinthians 5. 2 teaches that we are stuck with this sense of longing for the glorified bodies that we’ll one day receive.

It says we’ve grown for them. Now the angels already have their glorified bodies. You and I are lower than the angels in our form, but not in our value to God, as we’ll see in this passage, God values us because we’re his.

He loves us because we’re his. And he didn’t create the angels to have dominion. He created us for that.

Look at the rest of verses 7 and 8. The text says here, thou crownest him with glory and honor, and did set him over the works of thy hands. Thou has put all things in subjection under his feet, for in that he put all in subjection under him.

He left nothing that is not put under him, but now we see not yet all things put under him. So in those verses, God gave us a place of preeminence in creation. God gave mankind a place of preeminence.

Man was crowned with glory and honor because we were created in the image of God. Man was set over the works of God’s hands with the rest of creation in subjection because he made us to be his stewards. And we see this in Genesis chapter 1, verses 27 through 29 say, so God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them, and God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

And God said, behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of the tree yielding seed, to you it shall be for meat. God said, it all belongs to you. I’ve given it all to you.

It’s all under you. Go be fruitful and multiply and have dominion. So God created us to have fellowship with him, and he set us up as the stewards of his creation.

That was God’s design for us in the beginning. But the Bible doesn’t mention this just to tell us how awesome we are, okay, before you start to think that. Don’t forget what this passage from Hebrews and Psalms says about humanity.

It’s to remind us about how awesome God is. David’s amazed that God would bother to think about us. Our value doesn’t come from us.

It comes from the fact that we are his. And these verses challenge us to recognize how small we are and to glorify God for all that he has done for us. Even though God created us for fellowship with him and for dominion over creation, there’s a problem, as there usually is.

See, we chose sin instead. We chose to rebel against God and to walk away from him. And the end of verse 8 says, but now we see not yet all things put under him.

It might sound like a contradiction to say all things are under man, and then to turn right around and say not all things are under man. But that’s not quite what the verse is saying. The standard version of that verse where it says, at present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.

We do not yet see everything in subjection to him. So God did put the rest of creation in subjection to man, but we don’t see it there today. We see death, we see disease, we see natural disasters, we see danger and destruction of all sorts.

Why is that? It’s because of sin. It’s because of sin.

Romans 5. 12 tells us that the presence of sin unleashed death on the whole world. You know, man is the most fortunate of all species, not merely because God created us to have this dominion, but because we’re the only creatures that can actually know our creator.

We were created to have a relationship with him, to have fellowship with him, but we forfeited all of that and we can’t do anything to get it back, but there is a solution. You see, God didn’t just show his love for us in elevating such lowly creatures to a place of honor at the top of the food chain, he showed his unfathomable love for us by lowering himself to become a man. You know, that almost feels wrong to say, but that’s what the Bible tells us, that Jesus Christ, God the Son, actually became a man.

So let’s look at verse 9. It says, but we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. Now, I already have discussed this morning what it means to be made a little lower than the angels when we looked at verse 7.

Here in verse 9, it means that Jesus took on this human nature. It means God became a man. Again, Jesus didn’t stop being God when he came to earth.

He added a human nature to his already fully divine nature. This verse also tells us why he became a man, for the suffering of death. See, Jesus had to become a man in order to suffer and die for me.

God is eternal. God cannot come into existence. He cannot go out of existence. He doesn’t die.

He just is. Always. He just is.

He’s eternal. But with a fully human nature and a human body, Jesus could be nailed to the cross and he could suffer and he could die as a sinless man to pay for the crimes of sinful men. Think about this. Don’t miss this point here.

This is how much God loves you. God the Son stooped down so that he could become a man, so that he could take on all the punishment for every sin you will have ever committed, even though those sins are committed against him. That’s how much he loved you.

You needed someone to pay for your sins, and God became a man to do just that. But he was still God. He was still God.

So verse 9 says, he was crowned with glory and honor. He suffered the indignity and the anguish of a cruel death on the cross, but that’s where the story ended. Because he’s God, he rose from the dead, once being despised and rejected, now to be recognized for who he really is.

Because he’s God, the payment that he made on our behalf was all sufficient, and he receives the reward of honor and glory from the grateful hearts of those who have been redeemed by his ultimate sacrifice. And because he’s God, because he’s God, one day every knee will bow before him, and every tongue will, in the words of Philippians 2. 11, confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Ultimately, he will receive the glory and honor he deserves for who he is and what he’s done for us. Verse 9 also says that he, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man. Jesus tasted death for every person, no matter what we’ve done, so that those who believe on him will be saved.

This salvation is offered to us simply because of the grace of God. The simplest explanation I can give you this morning for what grace means is undeserved kindness. And that’s where the offer of salvation comes from.

We’ve done nothing to deserve it. We’ve done nothing to earn it. It’s simply the undeserved kindness of God toward us that God the Son was willing to taste death for us so that God the Father could forgive us.

And now let’s look at verse 10. It says, for it became him for whom are all things and by whom are all things in bringing many sons unto glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. In the middle of the verse, there’s a little note there, a little note of reminder that it’s all about God.

Saying for whom are all things and by whom are all things means that God made all things, including us, for his own glory. Now, if we take out that little note, even though it’s important, if we take out that little note, you’ll see the main point of the verse, and it will say, for it became him in bringing many sons unto glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. Now to say it became him means that it was suitable or proper to do it this way.

And bringing many sons unto glory refers to God’s plan of redemption where he takes sinners out of the depths of depravity, he forgives us, he declares us righteous, and he adopts us as his sons and daughters. The only way for God to bring us to glory was to make the captain of our salvation, as it says, perfect through sufferings. Jesus has always been sinless.

He didn’t need to be made sinless. That’s not what this word perfect means here. It means complete.

There was only one condition on which God could forgive us. The work of salvation had to be completed through the sufferings of Jesus Christ on the cross. That’s why I put so much emphasis at the beginning of this message on the fact that Jesus is both God and man.

The only way God’s plan of salvation would ever work is for the sinless God-man, Jesus Christ, to suffer, bleed, and die on the cross to bear the penalty that you and I deserved. It’s the only way it would ever work. And he couldn’t die unless he was human.

God can’t die. He couldn’t die unless he was human, and he couldn’t atone for our sin unless he was God. And because he’s both, he completed the work of our salvation on the cross.

and that’s what this whole passage is about. God loving man so much in spite of our sin that God the son became a man simply so that he could die to provide for our salvation. Some of you in this room today who are believers my goodness you may be going through such trying circumstances this morning that you might feel like God is distant and doesn’t care about you at all.

Even believers get to that point where we feel that way sometimes. My friends King David was amazed by just how much God cares for us. And when we think of what Jesus did on the cross, it should be all the proof that we could ever need that God loves us and desires a relationship with his children.

Romans 5. 8 says, But God commendeth his love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Folks, the cross is the single most compelling piece of evidence of God’s love for us.

If he was willing to go to those lengths to save you from hell, then no one has ever loved you so much as God does. With that in mind, fellow believers, we ought to remember what he’s done for us, no matter what our feelings may tell us. We should be amazed by his love and care, and we should live our lives out to glorify him out of thankfulness for all that he’s done for us.

If you ever feel like God doesn’t care for you, remember the cross, and remember the lengths that he went to to show his love. And for those of you this morning who’ve never trusted in Christ alone for your salvation, You need to know that he can forgive your sins today. He can forgive your sins today because he’s paid for them and he’s completed the work of salvation at the cross.

Every disobedient act or word or thought separates you from God. But Jesus paid for every bit of that on the cross. You cannot possibly be good enough to live up to God’s standard of sinless perfection.

But Jesus paid the price for your sins in full. Today you can have a clean slate with God. You can be adopted by God as a son or a daughter, and you can be assured of eternal life in heaven with him because Jesus shed his blood and died on the cross to pay for your sins in full.

You can be saved by believing in Jesus as your only savior. Admit that you’re a sinner who can’t save yourself. Believe that Jesus died to pay for your sins in full and that he rose again, and then ask God’s forgiveness for your sins.

And we have the promise of God that when we trust Jesus Christ, we will be saved. When we put our hope and our trust and our faith solely in Jesus Christ for our salvation, that we will be saved. Not because we’ve earned it, not because we’ve deserved it, not because God looks at us and says, hey, you’re pretty good, but because Jesus completed the work of salvation through his suffering on the cross.

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